1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to locating latencies in financial transactions on a network, and, more particularly, to capturing ISO 8583 messages, sent between a financial institution and a card issuing partner bank, for the purposes of evaluating whether authorization traffic along the network is being responded to in a timely manner.
2. Related Art
Consumers very often use financial transaction instruments as convenient forms of payment for purchases of goods and/or services (“goods/services”) instead of cash or checks. Traditionally, a “financial transaction instrument” is embodied as a card-shaped device, also referred to herein as a “card,” and may be any of the following: a traditional “plastic” transaction card (e.g., a credit card, a charge card, a debit card, a pre-paid or stored-value card, or the like); a titanium-containing, or other metal-containing, transaction card; a clear or translucent transaction card; a foldable or otherwise unconventionally-sized transaction card; or any other type of card used in connection with a financial transaction.
A typical financial transaction involves a number of parties. These parties can have multiple roles, depending on the type of transaction. For example, in one type of transaction, the main parties involved can include a “customer,” a “merchant,” an “acquirer,” a “financial institution,” and a “card issuing partner bank.” In this example, the partner bank (for example Citibank) issues a financial transaction instrument such as a card to the customer, and the card is branded with the name of the financial institution. When the customer uses the card, he or she swipes the card at the merchant's point of sale (POS) terminal in order to pay for the item.
The merchant's POS terminal sends the transaction to the acquirer. The acquirer has connections to multiple financial institutions, since it is impractical for each merchant to have connections to each financial institution. (However, in some cases, larger merchants act as their own acquirer.) The acquirer delivers the transaction to the appropriate financial institution, which delivers the transaction to the appropriate partner bank for authorization. Once authorization by the partner bank occurs, the transaction returns to the financial institution, is delivered to the acquirer, and then to the merchant's POS terminal. It is of course to be understood that the above structure is only one example, and that various parties to the transaction can assume various roles.
In order to enable a financial transaction to take place in the example provided above, the financial institution, therefore, engages in a relationship with one or more card issuing partner banks, and communications and transactions occur over a network. Typically, a financial institution's product (for example, software and/or hardware) is installed at the partner bank premises for connectivity into the financial institution's authorization network.
One problem is that authorization traffic from the partner bank, for example, between the financial institution's product and the partner bank, is often not responded to in a timely manner. Because of this, there is a need to monitor the authorization traffic and validate whether in each case such traffic is being timely responded to so that latencies can be located. Previous approaches to solving this problem have had drawbacks.
For example, in one conventional approach, a product is installed at the partner bank premises for connectivity into the financial institution's authorization network, and servers are installed to log traffic. When there is an issue with response times, the log is interrogated or analyzed to determine if the partner bank caused the latency. However, this approach can be very time consuming, particularly if the financial institution has many partner banks connected to its infrastructure. Moreover, as a practical matter, there are limitations to the amount of data that can be stored, and support of the servers can be cost prohibitive.
There is a need for a less time consuming and more cost effective approach for locating latencies in authorization traffic in a network.